Mehdi Hasan: “Give Afghans asylum. Because I'm sorry, it's over. We cannot win that war. But that doesn't mean we should abandon the Afghan people.”
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#Taliban #Afghanistan #Kabul
Totally agreed!
Sheep
Waking up to this stuff was very difficult. Yet, my son grew up with this war in Afghanistan. He is 33 years old. Yup.
Media taking both sides…
America did a great job of selling Afghani defense forces uniforms, and bombs. Guess all that expensive American kit doesn’t inspire confidence, resolve, or the will to fight. If the Afghanistani people do not want to stand up for themselves, that’s their decision.
America should have never been there in the first place.
Most of them just turned and joined the Mujahideen.
@Loving Life have you ever heard of the Pinga Mojado?
You must ask G Bush ! The Twin Towers of World Trade Centre took less than a day to come down and $2 billions.
Afghanistan took at least 20 years & cost $200 billion& still counting .
Now you complain ” Climate change”.
@B Tiger Not sure why you mention climate change? How are you equating these two things?
Bring our troops home, graveyard of empires
Media wanted us to leave and stay at same time. Fear mongering.
@My Perspective you think so? I think a good number of people wanted to see a more democratic shift and NOT drone strikes or whatever Trump was doing
The fact that this hot potatoe war has created a perfect breeding ground for Taliban takeover IS something to fear
Sometimes things are more nuanced than good/bad dichotomies
@K H Trump , Obama have done drone strikes. I’m not sure about Biden tho. I do congratulate him on some things he done. I don’t like democrats/republicans.
Very upsetting to see this happen after being deployed there and giving my blood sweat and tears for 2 1/2 years.
Thank you for your service, it’s counts!
@My Perspective China is also taking over Africa. Should we spend a few trillion there as well? It is a bottomless pit. I think we should stay the course and bring our troops out of there. We may not agree with Afgani leadership, but they are still a sovereign country. Neither China nor the US should be there.
@My Perspective Trump was the one who made this deal. Biden just stuck to it. And if you use force against the lawfully elected government you’re a traitor.
I can understand your upset. I didn’t serve there, but nevertheless I find this deeply disturbing. Especially with the 20th anniversary of 9/11 coming up next month.
How about Vietnam, most of those guys never even came back, or were so messed up they never could get it together, and they were not welcome back, they were called names, spat upon and even attacked, you did not have to experience that!
I feel like all of us who served got slapped in the face and told our sacrifices and all that we did didn’t matter. We trained the government there. And they rolled over. 20 years and they lose it in 20 days
@My Perspective Well, that’s nonsense and foolishness. A true leader has to bear the weight of human history – both the good and the bad. Biden’s going to have to bear the weight of bad decisions by both the Bush and Obama administrations on Afghanistan. I’m sure Biden was aware of the risk of this thing “going south and what he was going to have to carry if it did. As bad as a president Trump was his decision to have the US leave the country by a firm date was the right one. That’s evident by the fact that 20 years and 200 trillion dollars was lost in 20 days. Can you imagine how much good we could have done in our own country for 200 trillion dollars? Good grief. What fool would want us to stay any longer?
I’m sorry for your sacrifice. You showed great honor and courage by being there. Sometimes that’s everything and hopefully, you can rest easy with that. However, the US public has been disengaged / disconnected from the conflict in Afghanistan for at least the last 12 years. It was just another conflict to most in a far off place. Now it’s come back into our consciousness because we see that all that we did after killing Osama bin Laden was wasted and useless. Now we’re all casting around for someone, anyone to blame because the failure that many predicted and warned about for not going into Afghanistan has come true. “The chickens have come home to roost” as it were. Now maybe the best we can do is to make the best of a bad situation by getting our folks and any Afghans who helped us out safely. We saw what happened to Russian in Afghanistan, yet in our arrogance we thought we knew better. It was a cautionary tale, but as a nation we refused to see. Foolish. And now here we are.
@marsh creek Great comment. I think many Afghanis are as fed up with foreign interference as they are the Taliban. Yet the Taliban see themselves as a very legitimate political group. Extremely right wing and with few shared values to us, but we must leave them to it. Unless we want to spend a few more billion.
No, you did your part and we thank you for your service.
Nah, we’re the greatest fighting force on Earth that taught a generation of Afghan women about equality and literacy. We were hope in a land where hope was impossible. The might of civilization in a land that only deserves barbarism. This just shows that not every country deserves democracy if they can’t fight for it themselves.
The higher ranking people made profit of the US expenses
Exactly..
They’re off with US money living in cushy exile life
@judie suh Not even exile. They live in Afghanistan still.
The war hawks want the US to stay let them fight then
Mehdi Hassan is correct. Ultimately this war only benefits the defense industry and the military industrial complex.
Totally agreed. Only selling ( big $ ) & no after sales ( little $ ).
We won’t allow china to gain control. This is BIDENS legacy. A TOTAL FAILURE
@My Perspective Why are we not sending trilions to Africa then? China is all over Aftica.
The Afghan army was trained by America, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany and other countries over the last twenty years to one day defend their country. Billions of dollars in military aid was provided to what end? Who has benefited financially from all the military aid? The big question is which country is funding the Taliban and their military push and what is their aim?
Very well said. Twenty years of war and a trillion dollars spent. It’s the fault of Afghan soldiers not Presidents Biden and Trump.
@TY2 you’re not thinking about CHINA are you? We can’t leave
May be they are the same countries funding them. Which are the countries having a lot of money ???
Isn’t it possible that we basically only created the FACADE of a functional democracy in these places, but in doing so we also created a lot of disgruntled Afghanis, and these people, the majority of the very fabric of that society WELCOMES the Taliban, who to some of these people have ALWAYS represented “freedom fighters” or terrorists to us. I mean it’s not their military might, Altho they’re definitely getting the Afghani troops weapons as they flee
The Taliban certainly see themselves as a legitimate political group, and quite possibly many Afghans welcome them. Whiel others fear them. They are definitely very right wing, but I believe we should let them get on with it. We have spent trillions and too many years there.
Either we stay or we leave, there is no in between.
@Charles Martin Unfortunately, the US government believes no more funds should be wasted on foreign citizens. Biden made a decision to leave, which will benefit Americans, but not the average Afghan. Biden fulfilled his duty as president to the homeland, which is something I respect. It’s just unfortunate that there has to be an inevitable fallout in the Middle East because corporate heads got greedy with the war on terror
@Chris Gimbel Great. No more funds for Pakistan or Israel or any other foreign country. Like that is going to happen. And we stayed in Afghanistan based on the misguided notion that it was better to fight them there, than here. Yes some defense corporations benefited, but you are misguided if you think they were the prime drivers of the policy.
@Charles Martin I probably am simplifying the issue a little bit. It’s just maddening that US imperial interests are still being supported when our own country is on the brink of domestic chaos.
@Chris Gimbel I don’t disagree the greatest problems we have right now are here at home, with the biggest being trust in our own democracy. Thats why the timing of what Biden did in Afghanistan was so poorly thought out. We were holding back the Taliban with 3,500 Americans and our air power. We ourselves were suffering almost no casualties. Many Americans now witnessing what is going on in Afghanistan are dismayed. And Biden has handed the Republicans the rope with which they are going to hang him in 2024.
@Charles Martin Let’s just hope all allies are evacuated from the area by the time Kabul is attacked. We don’t need another embassy crisis
I disagree and it was time for us to leave a long time ago. If they want their country back, then they need to take it back on their own.
It does not work that way. The time to leave was just after Operation Anaconda in April 2002. But we mistakenly chose to stay–and that decision means that we cannot escape the taint of losing.
I was waiting for a reasoning to stay there but asylum sounds like an actual solution for some of the people. The people who complained about the Syrian refugees will be upset but I’m ok with that.
Unfortunately you can’t give asylum to a whole country.
Modern America isn’t very interested in helping people.
@QuasiELVIS we have literally spent trillions over the past decades “helping” people.
They should of made a plan to get the translation personal and their families out at the same time as the troops
Worry about the special Vestas latter
I’m surprised Herat fell so quickly and seemingly easily. I figured that there would be at least some resistance there given that area’s history & connections.
To what end should they put up resistance? Should they go back to the competing warlords who teared the country apart before the Taliban?
@Eljan Rimsa Because life will be so wonderful under the Taliban. Why don’t you move there if you like it so much.
What is staggering is that just a day or two ago they had captured their first provincial capital, then in a short space of time they capture a majority of provincial capitals. That only happens if the will to resist on the government’s side collapses completely.
@Charles Martin That’s how the Taliban swept through the country in 1994/1996. People didn’t trust the regional warlords and the corrupt government in Kabul. Fighters stood by or switched sides.
@Eljan Rimsa Yeah because the Taliban are the good guys. The problem in Afghanistan is with the exception of a few, there are no good guys. We should have realized that a long time ago.
The “war” in Afghanistan is not ours to win or lose. It’s the Afghans.
But you loose face. Your allies dare not say this, Japan included ( US’s lap dog ).
They’re not restraining the Taliban because people at the highest levels of government in the countries you mentioned have sympathy for the Taliban and their ideals.
Do you mean Pakistan?
This world is cold. Everybody eventually will mind his/her business when there is no prospect to look forward to.
We had our chance to destroy them since they were so “evil”, but we didn’t because the war was never over morals or “democracy”. It was over oil
Afghanistan has always been at war over opium. 🙄
To quote Sun Tzu: There is no instance of any Nation that has benefited from prolonged warfare.